The Spirit Engineer

I am deeply interested in the heyday of spiritualism in Europe and America in the 19th and 20th centuries, so I wanted to read this book as soon as I saw the synopsis. I wasn’t disappointed. 

Set in Belfast in 1914, the novel is based upon the real-life attempts of engineering professor William Jackson Crawford to prove the existence of spirits by the use of technology. The intensity of this story, of Crawford’s unrelenting obsession to prove himself, grabbed me and wouldn’t let go. I took the book with me on the train every morning and found it hard to… show more.

I felt this was one of the creepiest tales I have ever read. Its creepiness penetrated my own mind with its portrayal of perverse behavior among the living, the increasingly deranged mental state of the main protagonist, and the fervor of the Goligher Circle as they purported to contact the dead.

Pity and terror combine in this story; my empathy was with those they lured, drawn by their grief and despair. Primitive emotions are stirred up by the threat of supernatural danger; I felt shocked by the ingenious plot twist near the end.